Instant In-house for insurance intermediaries
We understand the key considerations clients face when determining how best to resource varying volumes of legal and compliance work.
Instant In-house is a bespoke retainer service for insurance intermediaries which provides instant access to a team of lawyers and compliance specialists for a fixed fee.
The team that we offer will be carefully selected having regard to your specific requirements and can work with you remotely or at your offices.
This model allows us to deliver our advice quickly, with a deeper insight into your business, and more cost-effectively than if we were to work on traditional hourly rates.
How it works
We set up your bespoke retainer package in three stages:
- We get to know you - We do the work getting to know you and putting a team in place — free of charge.
- We provide an initial telephone consultation free of charge, providing us with an opportunity to better understand your requirements.
- You will be allocated a client partner, responsible for you as a client, and a dedicated client relationship manager to serve as your daily point of contact. Your client relationship manager will get up to speed with your business and your requirements quickly.
- As part of this process we are happy to invest time up-front speaking to stakeholders, considering key issues, and prioritising the work to be
- We agree your bespoke retainer - Following your initial consultation, we will provide you with a proposal setting out our suggested scope of work, the team who you will be working with and a pricing model which is clear and straightforward.
- We get to work - From that point on, you and your wider team will be able to call upon our services, treating us as an extension of your in-house legal and compliance team.
You won’t have to worry about obtaining fee estimates, agreeing fixed fees, or other formalities and we will agree with you a process for reviewing the arrangement on a regular basis to ensure that the retainer is delivering excellent value.
What can be included?
Your carefully scoped, bespoke retainer package will be unique to you and tailored to the needs of your business. We have set out below a few examples of the types of services typically included in our bespoke retainer arrangements:
- Compliance queries - Responding to compliance queries, including relating to FCA permissions, client money and compliance with ICOBS, IDD and the FCA Handbook
- Commercial contracts - Reviewing contracts with customers, insurers and others, including binders, TOBAs and Appointed Representative Agreements
- Advertising and marketing - Advice in relation to product claims and promotions
- Employment and HR services - Advice on all employment issues including variations to contracts and terminations of employment, taking into account any SMCR considerations
- Intellectual property - Including strategic IP advice and exploitation agreements (but typically excluding filing and prosecution work, and IP disputes)
- Corporate governance and company secretarial
- Preliminary advice on disputes - (Typically delivering a preliminary assessment of our client’s position, and advising up to sending a letter before action)
- Property - This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have something else in mind, please just let us know.
We will always offer you:
- A dedicated Client Relationship Manager (CRM) - An experienced solicitor who is readily available as your daily point of contact. The CRM will act as a triage service for new instructions, identifying the relevant practice area specialist, and managing the delivery of our advice to ensure you receive the same, consistently high standard of service irrespective of who undertakes the work.
- Monthly reporting - A report setting out the current status of each matter undertaken under the retainer during the current reporting period.
- Regular review meetings - Your client Partner would review your retainer with you at regular intervals (typically monthly or quarterly) to ensure you are getting best value, and to provide flexibility should your needs change.
- Added value - As part of agreeing to your retainer arrangement, we can offer a complimentary program of free legal training which is tailored to your business.
Testimonials
“You go straight to the questions that I actually need the answer to… So very practical and you get to an answer much faster because of it, and understand that we have stakeholders that we need to communicate well with…”
“What you end up with is a real partnership [with] us and Browne Jacobson. It feels like the solution is our solution, not something that’s been imposed on us blindly by the lawyers.”
What makes us stand out?
Ten reasons you’ll never look back:
- Straightforward - A package based on what you need when you need it, not what you don’t.
- In-house experience - Extensive legal knowledge backed by in-depth insurance industry experience with many of our team having worked in-house or spent extended period on secondment to businesses in the insurance sector.
- Certainty on fees - Plan your budget on legal spend for each financial year.
- Reduced administration - With Instant In-house you get responsive, timely advice when you need it, and we don’t spend time on the administrative tasks that don’t add value.
There is no need to set up new matters, agree terms of engagement and agree fees for each individual piece of work. Your admin is significantly reduced and dealt with up front. - A single point of contact who knows you and your team - In addition to a client partner, we provide you with a client relationship manager to act as your primary point of contact. They can be available to visit you at your offices and can be available to attend key meetings when you need them. They would understand your business and share that knowledge with anybody else who they engage to deliver advice to you.
- Full-service team - With over 400 legal experts across our wider firm, your client relationship manager can leverage a breadth and depth of experience far greater than most in-house teams.
- A complete global solution - We are a member of the Harmonie network, an international network of insurance law firms and maintain close working relationships with other overseas law firms to ensure that we can meet our client’s legal requirements, wherever they may be.
- One-stop solution - With our instant in house solution, we are able to join up compliance advice with legal solutions, often meaning you do not need to engage separate compliance consultants and lawyers.
- Outstanding service - We find that reduced administration means that we are able to respond and deliver our advice much more quickly. We can also agree service levels to meet your particular requirements.
- Reporting and management information - We provide you with regular, monthly reporting to keep you updated on all your ongoing instructions.
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Contact
Tim Johnson
Partner
Tim specialises in insurance policy drafting, insurance coverage advice and defending professional liability claims against professionals in both the traditional and emerging sectors.
tim.johnson@brownejacobson.com
+44 (0)115 976 6557